This is an intriguing idea; kind of like the method used in "Lingua Latina per se ilustrata" but automatic and with rich media. This is definitely possible, though the domain space is quite large, some tradeoffs would have to be made that might stifle the exact vision.
I tried Remnote yesterday for the first time, after another user in this same thread recommended it.
I put a paper in, and clicked a sentence and ... it is somewhat magical. This is exactly what I meant, somewhere to have PDFs etc. and an easy way to make cards immediately.
I bought pro with AI, and then I put a full paper in. I asked the AI to make flashcards of the whole paper; it worked so well, it's basically SuperMemo's original idea of incremental reading.
Looking forward to using it more, thanks for your hard work.
Not sure I understood the gist, but let me try summarise what you do generally (i.e. not just for language learning).
- Instead of flashcards, you read content/write notes.
- You tag said content in some way which allows you to understand how difficult it is.
- When in "review" mode, you essentially choose what to reread based on the difficulty you are feeling has the most impact right now.
Yes, I do something like this now. It definitely does do the job. I just wonder if there could be something more, something smoother perhaps, and the API access could do the trick.
+1 SM is really interesting. Supermemo.guru (URL) is a fascinating resource written by a fascinating person (the creator of Supermemo), but the software is so unusable that it immediately shoots itself in the foot (or head). I don't think anyone should ever use it, but people should take away from it interesting concepts that they can use when writing new software.
A great shame, I see your point. I guess it comes down to the developer treating their product as something that could "help people" or something that "pays the bills". Hopefully the former would lead them to caring enough to spend the extra time for these significant QoL improvements.
I agree, we need something with a caring UX which encourages habit-forming. I feel like this space is very underexplored, especially considering the 1000s of note-taking adjacent apps made in the last decade.
Fair point, please see my comment in response to allenu, in this same thread, for a detailed view.
I did not mean to glaze over this aspect, I am aware this is very important. I can not and do not use AI for automating flashcards for this reason alone. But, I think my point still stands, getting information from one disparate app into another adds a lot of friction (saving it somewhere, copy and pasting and yada yada) to something that (I believe) should be as easy as possible. We have 1 click instant payment, but I can't have 1 click get this into some sort of inbox in Anki ready to flashcard-ify?
To be honest, I have a whole frustration with apps and windows that I'm still trying to word, but fundamentally all we are doing when we are "computing" is moving information around. I wish that information was a first class citizen at the OS level that could be leveraged by any app immediately. Utopian view but this stuff ain't gonna think about itself.
I hadn't thought of this; thank you for bringing this up. I will actually read into this. I didn't write it in my original comment, but I almost mentioned the OS because I'm coming round to the idea (albeit slowly) that the OS needs to provide some sort of hook into this capability natively for both maximum adoption and also ease of use (for both developer and end user).
Perhaps Shortcuts are now powerful enough to do this as a PoC, providing the SRS has some sort of open API that Shortcuts can take advantage of.
I've tried Fresh Cards so thank you for developing that app, and trying to add cool new software into the space.
Great question. Here's one way to do it:
The first is how clunky the process of going from X to flashcard feels to the end user. One way to deal with the fact that we are crossing software border is to add an extra step where highlighting something allows you to go into an "inbox" before any cards are made. It is clear what the user has to do. They read something interesting, and add it to the inbox. When they are ready, they can head over and only then use some sort of automation (either via custom prompt for an AI or otherwise) to make the cards. This gives them another step, or interface, at which they can decide whether or not the thing they highlighted (since highlighting is easy) is actually worth something. It segments the process into clear easy sections: highlighting, deciding which highlights to flashcardify (and therefore keep), and flashcard review.
It definitely is an open-ended process, and I appreciate that apps need to have a strong opinion on how to direct users from start to finish; but I feel this is definitely possible now with cheap and quick AI.
I didn't answer every question but hopefully that helps somewhat.
I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved.
What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important:
It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should work almost as OS additions to make everything feel native and frictionless; I don’t need another standalone tool that does X Y and Z, I just need some sort of pipe into an SRS that is Mac friendly and does the job whilst not being in the way.
If someone knows of such a tool, I would love to hear about it.